By Glenn Greenwald
Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46211.htm
Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46211.htm
January 12, 2017 "Information Clearing House"
- "The Intercept"
- In January, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as
U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this
specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the
decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania,
and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected
faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now
engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald
Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining
ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is
the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides
with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their
unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly
divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing
— eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align
with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those
behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a
Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of
legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan
congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen
uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those
strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of
political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and
its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own
policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive.
Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities
and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind.
Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated
as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize
and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality.
And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors
and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on
those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger
favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly,
shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it
comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to
believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to
endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who
deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from
basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were
on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most
aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the
public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by
a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and
Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes,
corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this
illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do
those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and
destructive attempts to undermine it.
For months, the
CIA, with unprecedented clarity, overtly threw its weight behind Hillary
Clinton’s candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump. In August, former acting
CIA Director Michael Morell announced his endorsement of Clinton in the New York
Times and claimed that “Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an
unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” The CIA and NSA director under
George W. Bush, Gen. Michael Hayden, also endorsed Clinton, and went to the Washington Post to warn, in the week
before the election, that “Donald Trump really does sound a lot like Vladimir
Putin,” adding that Trump is “the useful fool, some naif, manipulated by
Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted
and exploited.”
It is not hard to understand why
the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for
restraining the CIA’s proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war, while Trump denounced
it. Clinton clearly wanted a harder line than Obama took against the CIA’s
long-standing foes in Moscow, while Trump wanted improved relations and greater
cooperation. In general, Clinton defended and intended to extend the
decadeslong international military order on which the CIA and Pentagon’s
preeminence depends, while Trump — through a still-uncertain mix
of instability and extremist conviction — posed a threat to it.
Whatever one’s views are on those
debates, it is the democratic framework — the presidential election, the
confirmation process, congressional leaders, judicial proceedings, citizen
activism and protest, civil disobedience — that should determine how they are
resolved. All of those policy disputes were debated out in the open; the public
heard them; and Trump won. Nobody should crave the rule of Deep State
overlords.
Yet craving Deep State rule is
exactly what prominent Democratic operatives and media figures are
doing. Any doubt about that is now dispelled. Just last week, Chuck
Schumer issued a warning to Trump, telling Rachel Maddow that Trump was
being “really dumb” by challenging the unelected intelligence community because
of all the ways they possess to destroy those who dare to stand up to them:
Chuck Schumer
on Trump's tweet hitting intel community: "He's being really dumb to do
this." https://t.co/MOcU8ruOPK
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 4, 2017
And last night, many Democrats
openly embraced and celebrated what was, so plainly, an attempt by the Deep State
to sabotage an elected official who had defied it: ironically, its own form of
blackmail.
Back in October,
a political operative and former employee of the British
intelligence agency MI6 was being paid by Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump
(before that, he was paid by anti-Trump Republicans). He tried to convince
countless media outlets to publish a long memo he had written filled with
explosive accusations about Trump’s treason, business corruption and
sexual escapades, with the overarching theme that Trump was in servitude to
Moscow because they were blackmailing and bribing him.
Despite how many had it, no media
outlets published it. That was because these were anonymous claims
unaccompanied by any evidence at all, and even in this more permissive new
media environment, nobody was willing to be journalistically associated
with it. As the New York Times’ Executive Editor Dean Baquet put it last night, he would not publish these
“totally unsubstantiated” allegations because “we, like others, investigated
the allegations and haven’t corroborated them, and we felt we’re not in the
business of publishing things we can’t stand by.”
The closest this operative got to
success was convincing Mother Jones’s David Corn to publish an October 31 article reporting that “a
former senior intelligence officer for a Western country” claims that “he
provided the [FBI] with memos, based on his recent interactions with
Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to
co-opt and assist Trump.”
But because this was just an
anonymous claim unaccompanied by any evidence or any specifics (which Corn
withheld), it made very little impact. All of that changed yesterday. Why?
What changed was the intelligence
community’s resolution to cause this all to become public and to be viewed
as credible. In December, John McCain provided a copy of this report to the FBI and
demanded they take it seriously.
At some point last week, the chiefs
of the intelligence agencies decided to declare that this ex-British
intelligence operative was “credible” enough that his allegations warranted briefing
both Trump and Obama about them, thus stamping some sort of vague,
indirect, and deniable official approval on these accusations. Someone — by all
appearances, numerous officials — then went to CNN to tell them they had done
this, causing CNN to go on-air and, in the gravest of tones, announce the
“Breaking News” that “the nation’s top intelligence officials” briefed Obama
and Trump that Russia had compiled information that “compromised
President-elect Trump.”
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on
the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the
hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount
of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed
quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims
about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision,
saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” —
Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make
up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably
produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of
people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
One can certainly object
to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many
journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where
it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified,
unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about
which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the
allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide
whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is
no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the
most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at
these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the
dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing
these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it
allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and
CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
Almost immediately after
it was published, the farcical nature of the “dossier” manifested. Not
only was its author anonymous, but he was paid by Democrats (and, before that,
by Trump’s GOP adversaries) to dig up dirt on Trump. Worse, he himself cited no
evidence of any kind, but instead relied on a string of other anonymous people
in Russia he claims told him these things. Worse still, the document was filled
with amateur errors.
While many of the claims are
inherently unverified, some can be confirmed. One such claim — that Trump
lawyer Michael Cohen secretly traveled to Prague in August to meet with
Russian officials — was strongly denied by Cohen, who insisted he had never
been to Prague in his life (Prague is the same place that foreign intelligence
officials claimed, in 2001, was the site of a nonexistent
meeting between Iraqi officials and 9/11 hijackers, which contributed to 70% of Americans believing, as late as the fall
of 2003, that Saddam personally planned the 9/11 attack). This
morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that “the FBI
has found no evidence that [Cohen] traveled to the Czech Republic.”
None of this stopped Democratic
operatives and prominent media figures from treating these totally unverified
and unvetted allegations as grave revelations. From Vox’s Zach Beauchamp:
Good god pic.twitter.com/BiGqkiobA1
— Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) January 10, 2017
Look, don't
take anything in this dossier as gospel. But it's definitely evidence in favor
of some pretty extraordinary claims.
— Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) January 10, 2017
BuzzFeed’s Borzou Daraghai posted a
long series of tweets discussing the profound consequences of these
revelations, only occasionally remembering to insert the rather important
journalistic caveat “if true” in his meditations:
Whoa ????. So
guessing the press conference tomorrow is off. https://t.co/e4iNrNKgrh pic.twitter.com/VEa44PeICe
— Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) January 11, 2017
Stunning and
believable narrative in leaked docs describing alleged rift in Kremlin over
meddling in US elections https://t.co/e4iNrNKgrh pic.twitter.com/qY2TuSM5Fc
— Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) January 11, 2017
According to
raw intel file, Kremlin info ops regarded Trump, @DrJillStein,
LaRouche and @GenFlynn
all potential assets in war vs Clinton pic.twitter.com/3fxTcqUIUL
— Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) January 11, 2017
Bombshell if
true: Trump lawyer @MichaelCohen212 & Kremlin reps allegedly
held clandestine August meeting in Prague https://t.co/e4iNrO1RiP pic.twitter.com/7FBZjJyXMq
— Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) January 11, 2017
Meanwhile, liberal commentator
Rebecca Solnit declared this to be a “smoking gun” that proves Trump’s
“treason,” while Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas sounded the same theme:
With CNN
confirming that intelligence chiefs consider this report credible, it's about
time to start using the word "treason"
— Markos Moulitsas (@markos) January 11, 2017
While some Democrats sounded notes
of caution — party loyalist Josh Marshall commendably urged: “I would say in
reviewing raw, extremely raw ‘intel’, people shld retain their skepticism even
if they rightly think Trump is the worst” — the overwhelming reaction was the
same as all the other instances where the CIA and its allies released
unverified claims about Trump and Russia: instant embrace of the evidence-free
assertions as Truth, combined with proclamations that it demonstrated Trump’s
status as a traitor (with anyone expressing skepticism designated a
Kremlin agent or stooge).
There is a real danger
here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and
to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the
significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such
as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s
encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump
factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to
destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit —
render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual,
corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by
submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of
the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger.
The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is
self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so
many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda,
war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s
interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated
by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent
possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of
the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence
for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.”
But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated
anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with
convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the
legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned
by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent
strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and
gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson
described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around
aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly
passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They
involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually
care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence
community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty
assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot
possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Glenn Greenwald is one of
three co-founding editors of The Intercept. He is a journalist, constitutional
lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and
law. His most recent book, No Place to Hide, is about the U.S. surveillance
state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world.
